(Augusta, GA) - Paine College will present The Core Ensemble on March 31, 2011 at 7:30 p.m. for the 2011 Paine College Lyceum Series. This series of lectures and performances on the Arts is designed to enhance students' experience. Although designed primarily for students, the programs are free and open to the public. Groups are encouraged to attend. The Core Ensemble will perform "Aint I a Woman!" in the Gilbert-Lambuth Memorial Chapel.

Chamber Music Theatre is unique performance format developed by the Core Ensemble featuring a marriage of theatrical narrative to chamber music performance. Shinnerrie Jackson portrays multiple characters while interacting with the onstage musical trio of cello, piano and percussion.

"Ain't I a Woman!" is a chamber music theatre work for actress and trio (cello, piano & percussion) celebrating the lives and times of four significant African American Women: ex-slave and fiery abolitionist Sojourner Truth, renowned novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, exuberant folk artist Clementine Hunter and fervant civil rights worker Fannie Lou Hamer. The musical score is drawn from the heartfelt spirituals of the Deep South, the urban exuberance of the Jazz Age and concert music by African American composers including Diane Monroe.

The Core Ensemble has garnered national recognition for its efforts to commission new chamber and multi-genre works. Concertizing and residency programming has take the Core to Australia, Russia, the Caribbean, Ukraine and every region of the United States. The Core Ensemble was the 2000 recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award for Excellence in the Arts awarded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Boston Globe hailed the Core Ensemble as "often formidable, always intelligent, and ultimately compelling."

For more information, call the Office of Communications and Marketing at 706-396-7591 or contact Ms. Natasha Carter at Ncarter@paine.edu.